Obsession: Girl Abducted

Mark smiled to himself. No amount of money was worth the treasure he had locked in his closet. Muting the TV, he sat back to think. The scratches on his cheek were starting to sting. Things weren’t going quite as smoothly as he had imagined they would the day before, when she had seemed a lot more compliant.

No matter. Mark liked a challenge. It was like developing a really intricate computer program. Sometimes you had to go back again and again, even to rethink the whole design. He would have to rethink a little here. Ms. Hunter was exhibiting that fiery will she displayed so effectively in Lovers Quarrel, one of his favorites. That was all very well, but eventually she would learn to control that spirit—to subvert it to his will.

Mark could still hear Alana crying out from time to time as he made and ate his breakfast. Not that anyone but he would hear her. The next property was a half mile away. Still, it was distracting, so he went into his study and closed the door. Soon he was lost in computer code, focused entirely on his work.

~*~

“Breathe,” Alana ordered herself with the last vestige of her strength. Her throat hurt from screaming, and she was too exhausted to call out any longer. “Deep, cleansing breaths.” In…and out. In…and out. She tried to expand her lungs and fill them with air, but it felt as if there were a two-ton weight on her chest, as if the darkness itself were crushing her.

After the nightmare of being abducted, bound, beaten and raped, being forced into the terrifying confines of this cage was the last push that threatened to send her flying into the abyss. She was alone in the pitch black, in the deafening silence. Panic threatened like an oncoming wave, but she knew if she gave in now, she would lose her mind.

“Calm yourself, manage the anxiety, challenge the negative thinking, let the panic wash over you,” she whispered, reminding herself of the techniques the phobia therapist had taught her. How had her abductor known of her fear of confined spaces? As far as she knew, it was one thing she’d managed to keep out of the media’s endlessly voracious gossip machine.

“You can do this. You can do this,” she promised herself. “Remember your anxiety map, and navigate through it.”

This couldn’t go on much longer. Her rescuers would be coming soon—they had to be. She was Alana Hunter—she would have been missed the instant she didn’t show at the shoot. But how would they find her? Her phone was somewhere on the George Washington Bridge, crushed and destroyed.

Maybe the doorman had seen the car her abductor had used. Maybe street cameras had caught the license plate. Yes! They would track down the car, and it would lead them to the madman who held her prisoner. Already the police were probably closing in on the property, the SWAT team ready to burst in at any second.

Okay. Good. She was breathing again, the panic receding. She shifted in a vain attempt to get more comfortable. Her stomach, so long empty, had curled itself into a hard, painful knot, and her tongue felt like it was covered in sandpaper.

“But you’re alive,” she whispered aloud. “The guy is obviously insane, but if he’d been planning to kill you, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”

Something brushed her face, and Alana screamed, jerking sharply in the tight confines of the small prison. Her heart was beating so hard she feared it would smash right out of her chest.

“A house spider, a harmless nothing little bug,” she murmured as she willed herself to calm down once more. She focused on her breathing again, while trying to remember some of the affirmations the phobia coach had taught her.

Her thoughts drifted to the moment she’d entered the studio car. Her very first thought upon seeing the new driver was how much better looking he was than Hank. For a second she’d even wondered if he was an actor—someone sexy and new to the acting scene. He had thick golden-blond hair that hung over a high, smooth forehead, and intelligent green eyes. She had liked his long Roman nose and the generous mouth that was quirking into a nervous smile as she looked at him. She’d assumed his nerves were a result of meeting a famous actress in the flesh, but how wrong she’d been.

There was that horrible moment of realization that they were going the wrong way. When he’d pulled the gun, icy terror had shot through her body, leaving her dizzy and nauseated, her hands shaking. Her heart had pumped so hard she could feel it banging against her ribs and thumping in her ears. Yet here she was, still alive and relatively intact.

She was Alana Hunter, damn it, and this creep would never get away with what he’d done. She just needed to bide her time until the police arrived to rescue her. Meanwhile, she’d be damned if she was going to simply bow down and become this nut job’s sex slave, or whatever the hell it was he wanted from her. The bastard had picked the wrong woman to abduct.